After a busy couple of months, I’m back painting in oils. To start, I decided to take a panel I painted a background on a few months ago – now that it was finally dry!
This was painted with a palette knife with leftover oil paint — a fun thing to do, but then I found out it can take ages to dry when you glop oil paint onto a wooden board like this…!
I went through some of my “photos to paint” folder and came upon a photo I’d taken of a small owl sculpture. I quickly drew the owl onto my panel with a brush and odorless mineral spirit diluted oil paint, then began to paint with more diluted paint in a fast sketchy manner.
I built up layers, using a lot of mineral spirits, liking how it made for a more fluid, smooth application of my sticky paint.
I thought I was finished at this point, but let it sit overnight, and discovered some things that bothered me, so I worked a bit more on it. What do you think? Finished now?
Jana R. Johnson, Artist 